Loyal Fianna Fail servant Willie O’Dea has threatened to leave the party after four decades.
Mr O’Dea said he may run as an Independent Dail deputy, rather than support the party in another coalition government anchored by a confidence and supply deal.
The politician, who has celebrated 40 years as Fianna Fail TD in his native Limerick, criticised his party leader and Taoiseach Micheal Martin.
He said the arrangement to extend a power-sharing deal with Fine Gael after the 2020 General Election has alienated the party from its powerbase.
Mr O’Dea added: “My understanding of a confidence and supply agreement – if you look at what happens in Europe where you have a lot of this – is that their life expectancy is about 18 months to two years.
“Michael Martin signed up for three years, that was a bad mistake.
“His second mistake was that, even though [the agreement] had lasted almost three years, the [2019] local elections came along and we did surprisingly well and Sinn Fein did surprisingly badly – that was the time to cut the confidence and supply agreement off and go to the people.
“We had survived for more than two years without losing popularity, which was an achievement in itself, by sheer luck.
“We were lucky our supporters tolerated this, but then we got a great opportunity and instead of doing what... you know, like , I wouldn’t consider Conor McGregor as any kind of intellectual, but Conor McGregor’s attitude would be when you get a fella down, don’t let him get up .
“But, Micheal Martin seems to have a different mentality to Conor McGregor, so not only do we allow Sinn Fein to get up, but we allowed them plenty of time to reorganise and figure out what went wrong.”
The political veteran claimed the party has lost ground from staying too long in the arrangement. He added: “We’ve decided to coalesce with Fine Gael, so there is a probability that we could lose more ground, and if we do lose more ground and the party was [again]proposing to go into coalition with anybody, I wouldn’t be voting for that coalition.
“It would mean that I would have to go against the party, I’d have to resign from the party at that stage, if that situation came about. I would have to become an Independent TD then, once I had resigned from the party.
“I’d change over and I’d leave the party at that stage, if I was being whipped into voting for another coalition, having done badly in this one.”
Fianna Fail has struggled since the 2011 General Election when it shed 57 seats.
He said the party needs a reboot and another confidence and supply deal would be “the death-knell for Fianna Fail” and a few years in opposition at Dail Eireann would do his party “enormous good”.
